


All You Love is in You

by luckjustkissedyouhello



Series: Fear All You Want [1]
Category: Orbiting Human Circus of the Air (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Pre-Slash, Prompt: bedside vigil, brief mentions of julian's stepfather, divergence point: season 2, it's the plan, not beta read we die like men, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckjustkissedyouhello/pseuds/luckjustkissedyouhello
Summary: “It is not a ghost in your guest bedroom, it is a man,” she tells him, patiently and no longer laughing. “The same man who nearly died protecting you from the polar bear.”
Series: Fear All You Want [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637716
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	All You Love is in You

**Author's Note:**

> For the Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt: bedside vigil.
> 
> First The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) fic. Please be kind...

Fear all you want  
All you love is in you  
Fear all you need to  
And we'll be with you  
_Playing Evening_ by The Music Tapes

Jon Cameron reflects on how he got here. Here being: shut up in his own _closet_ phone cord stretched under the door, Leticia laughing her ass off at him, as if he wasn’t _in the fucking closet_ of his own home. Reflects, and says: “This is your fault,” at her, but there’s not enough malice for his liking in his voice. Probably because he’s always been vaguely afraid of the woman who could lift grown men (not _just_ the tiny Janitor who was hardly the definition of a full grown man, but stage hands and once, John himself - a rare case of a performance he didn’t want to repeat), and he’s not keen to have her strength united with her newfound protective instincts towards the Janitor turned toward him. Certainly not when it’s her trying to protect the goddamned ghost she’s made him move into his own home. The ghost that’s made him lose sleep three nights and counting. The ghost moved in three nights ago. 

On the other end of the phone, Leticia laughs harder, not saying a word. 

John huffs a sigh. “It _is_. You made me bring him here and now—“ 

“-And now you are hiding in a closet like a child,” Leticia interrupts, very unkindly. 

“I mean. I was a grown man before I stopped hiding in the closet.” John mutters in response, but well… he’s too tired and sleep deprived to go down _that_ rabbit hole of thought, so he presses on like he didn’t say that. “And I’m not _hiding_ , Leticia,” more laughter that is somehow accented in French. “I’m trying to get some peace and quiet, and an extra set of doors between myself and the ghost you _forced_ me to move into my home.” 

“John,” Leticia says his name like she does when he’s ramping up to rant at the PBC. John thinks of it as the ‘you should know how this will work out if you continue being a dick, but I’m fond of you for being so emotional over the wellbeing of our show’ voice (at least, he likes to think that last part is in there, he’s mostly sure it is…). “It is not a ghost in your guest bedroom, it is a man,” she tells him, patiently and no longer laughing. “The same man who nearly died protecting you from the polar bear.” 

“Wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t always sneaking on the show and ruining things,” John mumbles - is wise to mumble it because she clears her throat. 

“What was that, John?” She asks, and the patience is gone in favor of simmering French Rage. Before hiring Leticia, John didn’t know there was such a thing as French Rage. But now? Oh, now he _knows_ there is. 

“Nothing.” He pouts some more, even though it’s not really all that fun to pout when no one can see you. 

There is silence on the other end of the phone, long enough to make John wonder if she’s given up on him as hopeless (that would actually kind of hurt) and hung up on him. Eventually, she says: “Did you ask him why he keeps making such noises?” 

John winces. “No, Leticia. Why would I do that? I don’t want to know why he’s wailing like a ghost in my guest bedroom. The one, by the way, I was perfectly happy to keep empty.” 

“Do not be mean, John,” Leticia chides, gently enough. “He could not sleep in the cold closet after leaving the hospital. And he could not stay with me. I have no place to put him. You are the one with extra rooms in your home. You are the only one on the show that has extra rooms in your home, John. The show that he helped save by bringing the Great Recitating Platypus of the North to us, remember?” 

He gives a noncommittal hum. All those statements are true. It is not John’s fault that the PBC pays their host much better than any stagehands so Leticia couldn’t get a bigger place. Is it his fault for being well off? John is about to suggest that maybe the show wouldn’t have needed rescuing if a) The Janitor didn’t ruin the show nightly and b) The Janitor hadn’t forgotten to lock the wild animal to the microphone stand, but The Janitor, or the thing that possesses The Janitor each night, wails. John can hear it perfectly between a wall and the closet door. 

She sighs and asks: “Have you not gone in there?” 

Like it’s the most rational thing in the world to bang on the door of a wailing person’s (admittedly temporary) bedroom and demand to know why they’re wailing. John has as not, would not. No. He’ll just continue to either lose sleep until he loses his hosting gig and the show tanks without him, or sleep in his closet until his back gives out and he loses his hosting gig and the show tanks without him. He says as much to Leticia. 

“John. John. John.” She repeats his name - more often than not this is a sign that she’s trying to be gentle to him, right before she kicks him in his behind. Metaphorically. Except for that one time. “If you have not spoken to him about this, then how do you know he knows he is waking you up?” 

John’s got a bottle of wine in him, an unopened bottle of gin on the closet floor next to him (he wasn’t sleeping on the floor, let alone a closet floor, with no less than that much alcohol in his belly, thank you), so it takes him a long moment to deconstruct that sentence. He doesn’t like what he comes up with. “He has to be aware he’s so loud.” 

“Maybe he is asleep? You know, having a nightmare, maybe? A bad dream.” She offers, and it makes a disturbing amount of sense. No grown adult would allow themselves to be heard crying that hard, alone, would they? It’s his turn to give a noncommittal hum. She presses on: “It is Julian. He probably assumes that you will tell him if he’s being a bother. It’s what everyone does already.” 

John does not like the way that statement makes his gut twist around his wine. He probably should have eaten dinner. Instead of thinking about how he’s treated The Janitor thus far, he edges away from that thought to another unpleasant one. He sighs and asks: “I’m going to have to go in there, aren’t I?” 

“It would be in your best interest if you want to get any sleep. And maybe Julian’s best interest too.” 

John sighs again, just in case she didn’t hear it the previous time. “What if he is awake. And just… _crying_ in there?” He can hardly say the sentence, the idea is too horrible. 

“Then he deserves your comfort, do you not think?” 

“Fuck.” John says. Then, again: “Fuck.” Just to see if a second time makes him feel better. It does not. 

“Go, John. Now. Before I have to get dressed and drive to your home at three o’clock in the—“ 

“—Okay. Fine. Okay. I can do this.” He pauses before hanging up. “How--How do I do this?” He asks her in a small voice that only Leticia ever gets to hear. 

“You knock on the door. You open it when he says come in, and you act like the human being you are, deep down inside, John.” 

“Fuck,” he tells her, for the third time. It’s still not really helping. 

“Good night!” She sing-songs it to him, and now, the line goes truly dead. 

“Fuck,” John says to his empty closet. It does not help. 

He opens the gin. That, he hopes, will help. Maybe he won’t be able to even remember this whole debacle. 

+++ 

Julian is alone. He is always alone. As The Narrator said, he spends twenty three hours and forty five minutes a day alone. And it...it’s sad. It’s hard to breathe, he’s so sad. And...it’s confusing? He didn’t think he was alone, always? HE kept feeling like this...this wasn’t right. 

He sits at the top of The Tower, forehead resting on a girder. He’s too sad to even press his ear to it to listen. What’s the point? There would be no radio show. There wouldn’t ever be a show again. That was just a story he told Coco to help pass the time at night when things were too lonely, when Coco’s questions made something ugly and unnamed twist painfully in his guts...except he didn’t know how he knew that. He...he doesn’t think he’s seen Coco in a very long time. 

He is crying. But up high, it’s safe and it is also safe to cry. Julian learned that young. So he does. It’s raining. Which is fitting. He should go inside, but the rain doesn’t really feel like rain? 

“Julian!” A voice shouts, almost right in his ear, but far away at the same time. 

Julian flinches, looking around widely. He knows that voice. He does. He hasn’t heard it in a long while. But he knows it. Julian stands up. 

“Wake up, Julian!” 

“Mr. Cameron?” Julian asks, the name feeling like it’s been ages since he said it. But...but he’s been telling Coco the story? Julian’s chest aches suddenly, he feels like everything is too tight. He can’t breathe. 

“Wake up!” This time the voice is much louder, much closer. Julian feels a phantom touch (and oh how he forgot what it’s like for someone to touch him like he’s real) on his shoulder and he gasps in, but that hurts his chest more. Julian doubles over, his hands leaving the girder to clutch at his chest. 

But! It’s wet! The flinch makes him slip! He pinwheels his arms, trying desperately to catch onto anything. The back of his hand makes contact with something soft and warm, not at all like the metal that makes up The Tower, but before he can twist his hand to grab onto it, it’s gone, and he’s falling, falling to his death! For one long moment he is weightless...he squeezes his eyes shut, not wanting to see the ground rush up at him, the cement that will spit his head right op— 

Pain explodes in his chest, his head. Julian groans. Above him, someone is muttering ‘my face!’ and Julian is slowly realizing he is alive. That it is not the cement outside The Tower that he is laying on, but carpet. Expensive, plush carpet. The pain in his head recedes, but his chest is still mostly agony. He can’t get a breath in, it hurts too much. Julian lets out a whine of pain, then goes tenser. People don’t like when you make those kinds of sounds. Sometimes, people get really angry. Going tense just makes his chest _scream_ at him. 

“Jesus. Just...Just breathe, Julian.” The voice above him says and a hand rests on his shoulder. 

It’s Mr. Cameron’s voice, probably Mr. Cameron’s hand touching him. The shock of it has Julian gasping in a much needed breath that helps to clear his head. Mr. Cameron? 

Julian forces himself to open his eyes. John Cameron is sitting on a bed, looking down at him with — is that concern? Yes? 

And relief. And Mr. Cameron is wearing pajamas and a robe? 

Julian blinks. His eyes hurt in a way that tells him he’s been crying. He’s so confused. For a moment, all he can do is look up at the other man from where he lays on the carpet, gasping violently for breath, confused but hurting too severely to think of anything but how each breath _hurts_. 

Julian presses a hand to his chest and winces, feels bandages under his hand. It...that’s the trigger that makes him remember _everything_. The polar bear. The hospital. Staggering away from the hospital to the tower and the Great Recitating Platypus of the North saving the show….how after, everyone was shouting and celebrating and happy and it was all good until Jacques pounded him on the back and Julian’s head had been feeling like an expanding and shrinking balloon and then he started to fall. Someone caught him. Made him go back to the hospital, then. Then after, when the doctors said he could leave a few days later, Leticia insisting Mr. Cameron took him in, because the closet was too small, too cold…Julian opens his mouth to tell Mr. Cameron he’s okay, because the other man looks real concerned, but what comes out instead of an assurance is a sob and he launches forward, pressing his forehead to Mr. Cameron’s legs. 

“No, no, don’t _cry_ ” Mr. Cameron says, and he presses something solid and cold against the top of Julian’s head. “Here. Sit up. Drink this.” 

Julian does as told - he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s still hiccuping great big breaths as he sits up, and looks confusedly at Mr. Cameron’s blurry form. Mr. Cameron holds out a bottle. Julian takes it, and then drinks from it like told because...well… Mr. Cameron has done a lot for him. Julian doesn’t want to disappoint him. He’s already pretty sure he woke the other man up! 

So yeah. He takes a bit of a drink from the offered bottle, and almost spits it back out. “It tastes like burning pine needles, Mr. Cameron!” Julian says to him with a laugh after he’s managed to swallow. 

Mr. Cameron looks insulted, and takes the bottle back. “Ah, but you’re breathing normally now, so don’t tell me it didn’t work!” He argues, and takes a long swig from the bottle. Doesn’t even wipe off where Julian had his mouth on the bottle. Maybe Mr. Cameron doesn’t hate him after all? 

Julian doesn’t know what to say to that, since it’s true. And he’s not crying anymore. Not really. That was embarrassing. He knows boys aren’t supposed to cry, his stepfather told him that enough, but well...there were many things his stepfather told him that Julian wasn’t good at listening to. He frowns and wipes a hand across his face all the same. People didn’t like seeing tears and snot and stuff. 

Julian lets out a sigh, not liking the silence that fills the room, other than the sound of the bottle clinking against Mr. Cameron’s teeth as he takes another drink. So he asks: “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I had an awful nightmare that I made all this,” he waves a hand and then winces again, because ow that gesture hurt, to indicate...what? His life? “All this wasn’t real. That I really worked at the tower but all alone...it was sad.” 

“Yes,” John Cameron says. “You did wake me up. And it _must_ have been sad. I heard you crying in my closet.” 

“I wasn’t crying in your closet?” 

“No. I was in the closet!” 

Julian frowns. “Why were you in the closet?” 

“To get away from your crying!” Mr. Cameron shouts it, and maybe he’s still raw from his nightmare or the earlier thoughts of his stepfather, but Julian flinches back. 

Mr. Cameron frowns, and closes his eyes. “No. Julian. Don’t...Don’t….” Mr. Cameron trails off, like he doesn’t know what he’s trying to tell Julian not to do and sighs, opening his eyes again. “Just...get off the floor, okay? Come up here. Before Leticia—“ 

Julian doesn’t have to be told twice to get up. It is a very nice carpet, but it’s still hard and cold. And the bed is so very soft. He stands up and wobbles a bit, Mr. Cameron has to reach out and steady him with a hand. Julian sits down next to him, laughing lightly as he bounces a little on the bed. His hip, where Mr. Cameron touched, feels cold and sad now that there’s no touch. Julian never thought a hip could feel sad. 

“Julian,” Mr. Cameron says, sounding scandalized. “Are you _drunk_ off a sip of gin?” 

“I dunno. What is in the bottle?” 

Mr. Cameron sighs. “Gin.” 

“Then yes. I think I’m drunk on a sip of gin.” 

Mr. Cameron looks at him for a long moment and sighs again, shaking his head. Julian just...sits there? He doesn’t know what to do, what to say, here. Mr. Cameron takes another sip from the bottle and then passes it to Julian. Julian mirrors him, he learned young that sometimes that’s the best thing to do, just do what others are doing and maybe they’d not be so mean if they thought he was normal, so he takes a very big sip and almost chokes. He gets it down and shudders again before he hands the bottle back. 

In silence, Mr. Cameron takes another drink and then asks, after even more silence: “Do...do you need to talk about it?” All hesitantly, like he’s not used to dealing with people that have had nightmares. Did no one ever ask him that, Julian wonders, living all alone in his big home? 

Julian thinks about the question. Would talking about it help? He doesn’t think so. Some things, like awful recurring nightmares that you’re all alone and everyone that you knew in your life was a story...well...some things are just better _not_ spoken about too much. Julian knows he’s already bothered the other man, anyway. Woke him up. Julian is staying in his house and eating his food and wearing his pajamas...and...yeah. He doesn’t want to be a bother anymore than he already has been. 

“Nah,” he answers out loud, shaking his head again. “I’m okay now. I won’t go back to sleep. You can go back to bed, Mr. Cameron. I promise I won’t wake you again.” 

John Cameron looks like he’s ready to get up and go for a minute, but then a determined look crosses his face and he turns to fully look at Julian. “Julian, you need to sleep. You’re injured. Leticia would be very angry with me if I didn’t take proper care of you. She’ll probably already be mad about the gin.” 

Julian ducks his head, afraid to see the determined look on the other’s face any longer. “You need to sleep too, Mr. Cameron! You were hiding in the closet! If I sleep again, I’ll just have the same dream. It’s the only dream I have!” Julian grows a little more desperate with each sentence, sensing that he’s not going to be able to convince the other man to listen to him. 

“I wouldn’t say I was hid—“ Mr. Cameron starts, then shakes his head, Julian can see out of the corner of his eyes. “That’s not the point. The point is, we both need to sleep.” 

“I don’t want to sleep anymore,” Julian argues, feeling childish and not caring all that much. 

“Julian, be reasonable!” Mr. Cameron huffs, and then, when Julian’s head snaps up to look at the other man, deflates a bit, like he realizes how _scary_ that was. Mr. Cameron closes his eyes and sighs out: “What if I stayed until you fell asleep. Make sure you don’t have the same dream? You’ve got to be exhausted, Julian.” 

Julian wants to argue that he isn’t. But he is. Every night since the platypus has been the same nightmare, over and over, him trapped and alone in a world that doesn’t include the Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) and it’s _awful_ He wakes up all sad and with a stuffed up nose and achy eyes and it doesn’t feel like he slept at all. He bites his lip for a long moment, once again looking down rather than at the other man and he asks, very quietly, so quiet he’s surprised Mr. Cameron can hear him: “You really don’t mind?” 

Mr. Cameron laughs, but it’s not a mean laughing at him laugh laugh. “Julian, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I never offer to do anything I mind doing.” 

Julian hopes that includes letting Julian stay here at his house because Julian’s closet was deemed too cold by Leticia. He’s not brave enough to ask that, though, so he just nods, after a moment. “That might help, Mr. Cameron.” 

“You can call me John. You know that, right?” 

Julian tries not to look too panicked by the idea, and nods. He’s not sure how he can explain that he likes the...distinction that calling him Mr. Cameron offers. Julian can convince himself that Mr. Cameron is someone he couldn’t have a crush on, while John...John sounds like someone that he _could_ and that was a _problem_. So instead, he smiles and says: “I know, Mr. Cameron,” with a small little grin and hopes the other man drops it. 

Mr. Cameron looks like he’s going to argue for a minute, but then he just sighs and nods. “Alright…” he says, standing up from the bed. “Get back under the covers.” 

This was not how Julian ever wanted to picture getting into bed with the other man. But he pushes that thought away and does as he’s told, afraid that if he doesn’t do as told, Mr. Cameron will take back his offer to stay, and if he does, Julian is sure he won’t be able to sleep. Mr. Cameron looks around the room, like he’s looking for a chair, but doesn’t see one. So he goes around the bed and sits on the other side, up against the headboard, on top of the covers. 

This won’t work, Julian thinks. He’s too keyed up to sleep again. But Mr. Cameron is a real, solid presence next to him. He can feel the other man’s weight pulling down the mattress, solid and real. Maybe it’s enough to convince Julian’s stupid brain that everyone and the circus is real? Maybe. Maybe… 

Julian wakes up confused and disorientated. He’s resting his head on someone’s chest, and that person is...holding him? He’s too sleepy to figure out what all that means, and he decides he doesn’t care, drifting back to sleep in the warm strange feeling of being held. 

It doesn’t matter that when he wakes again, he’s alone, draped over a pillow. Because, as he wakes up he realizes two things: 1) he didn't have any nightmares and 2) he knows he didn’t imagine waking up in the early morning hours to Mr--John, holding him.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got at least another planned for this series.
> 
> if you want to give me Bad Things Happen Bingo prompts, follow me on tumblr: mabergunexpress.tumblr.com/


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